BEGINNING

Loosely based upon the Famous sonnet Not Marble, Nor the Guilded Monuments by William Shakespeare and The Life of Ancient Greek king Ozymandias the lyrics floated in the air till the hissing and click started.

The whole song and side played out with a final

Hiss Hiss Click !!

Hiss Hiss Click !!

Hiss Hiss Click !!

Hiss Hiss Click !!

It reached and ended at the centre of the vinyl tripping back on the empty grooves.

There was no life left to lift it and stop the rotations.

Whether this is the beginning of the story or the last paragraph is — readers perception.

Whether it was the end of the vinyl or the beginning of a new life is — man’s perception.

The room was silent apart from the hiss and clicks.

There was not a single breath to be heard in the room.

Lord Yama had already noosed his prize.

Is this the beginning or was it the end?

For the vinyl record playing on the His Masters Voice gramophone, it had reached the blank grooves.

It was THE END !!

ONCE UPON A TIME —

would be the normal beginning of fairy tale but as this is not a fairy tale so ignore this line.

This is a story of a human who sweated out in the dusty streets of Bombay !!

This is the story of

SUBHASH !!

SUBHASH KIRTIKAR !!

SUBHASH BALARAO KIRTIKAR !!

A normal soul among the million of nameless souls in this buzzing city it was life in the 1970s

Driven by famine, travelling hungry Subhash had reached this city along with hundreds and thousands of others from all over the rain deprived states of Maharashtra and Bengal

The Rain God’s had abandoned them and now they migrated to find solace in the textile looms of this magical city.

Born into a family of farmers his family like hundreds of others could not feed the hungry mouths due to bad crops and overburdened loans from Zamindar’s (landowners)

His father Balarao Kirtikar was a farmer and a man of high self-esteem and refused to bow down to the evil Zamindar’s.

Tilling land hypothecated to these zamindars did not give him the fruits of his toil as the evil landlords plundered them in daylight with taxes and interests.

Degrees of refusal to tag the line either led to excessive oppression or even murder.

Balarao Kirtikar came under the latter so

he was targeted in the land grabs and disappeared one night leaving his widowed wife, son and daughter to the mercy of the cruelty in the land.

Teenaged Subhash decided to leave the village and travel with his mother and sister to Bombay.

He had faith in his grit and support of his muscles to work in the cotton mills of the city.

Traversing the distance from his village to the city with tear-soaked eyes and empty hungry stomachs they somehow reached and got refuge with a well-settled elderly couple who benefitted many years ago from the good days of Balarao’s generosity.

Thankful that he had a roof over their head, Subhash started combing the city in areas like Byculla and Parel which housed the cloth mills enquiring for jobs.

He managed to find the position of loom hand in one of the smaller mills and started working earnestly.

Years passed and was settling slowly for him and his family to have a decent life of existence.

Moving into a decently spaced ‘kholi’ in one of the Chawls he lived with with his mother and sister and life moved on.

Simultaneously change was coming in the politics of cloth mills.

Those were the beginning days when labour leaders were coming to the forefront and holding the mill owners to task for underpayments and bad working and living conditions of the hundreds and millions of workers.

These leaders were getting powerful and by muscle power and arm, twisting managed to get the workers under their wings and started blackmailing the owners for personal undercuts and benefits.

Subhash Balarao Kirtikar being a great orator became one of them and a name to reckon with.

His speeches were captivating and his audiences increased both by fan following and arm twisting.

The general threat was a strike and this brought the mill owners to their knees.

They were already suffering.

Development of new industrialised high-performance machines bridled with reduction of the trade from England had reduced the need for such a large workforce.

So the owners were already at breaking point.

Profit margins had reduced considerably and now this threat of strikes was crippling them.

Seth Suraj Kanojia was one such mill owner who was being affected.

Born into a business house he had once built up his clothing empires by workforce inclusive management.

He now felt the stress was too much and he could not cope up with the Union arm twisting.

The labour leaders including Subhash Balarao Kirtikar had become a thorn.

He refused to budge and give in to the demands and preferred to shut the mills and let the workers go on strike.

All over the city, similar standoffs had brought the roaring mills to screeching halts and wherein the initial day's compromises would be reached, the situation had now arrived where demands were not agreed to and mill closures went on for weeks and months.

The price of real estate was slowly soaring in the city and the mill owners now felt selling off their huge lands which housed the bleeding mills to unscrupulous builders and were a more lucrative option.

The mill lands were paving roads for expensive high rise commercial and residential blocks.

It was a BIG ROARING BUSINESS.

Corrupt politicians were hand in glove with the mill owners and labour leaders with their eyes on a piece of the cake.

There was a nexus between rich mill owners, crooked politicians, corrupt union leaders and rowdy ‘goondas’ (muscle men)

The main sufferers were the poor mill workers who were now grinding in the stones between the owners and their so-called union leaders.

It was a little more than five years since Subhash had moved from his village.

He loved Raj Kapoor’s movies and over the years was a collector of vinyl records of many mainly RK hit movie songs.

His collection which he played on the HMV gramophone included his latest acquisition, Dharam Karam.

He loved the number ’Ek din bik jayega, maati ke mol’ and swirling his whisky on the rocks lounging in the wooden armchair he would sit and reminisce.

He was a changed man —

Changed for the worse over these five years so far away from the ideology of his father.

The downside was that he had started drinking and started flexing his muscle power among his co-workers.

He regretted the turn his life was taking.

His mother and sister had left him and gone back to their village.

He was now an empty soul carrying a heavy burden.

The burden of his family and the burden of the striking workers.

There was destitute and hunger all around him in the houses and stomach’s of the workers and he had in a way for his gains sold off the trust of his co-workers.

This affected him in recent days and he was having a change of heart.

He realised that he was letting down his co-workers and the nexus would snuff out the poor.

He had to change his stance and stand up for the poor.

He wanted to carve out a new BEGINNING !!

Unknown to him his chalice today was poisoned.

Lord Yama was waiting in anticipation.

Seth Suraj had noticed Subhash’s recent slightly changed behaviour.

Fearing that he would change his stance and colluding with the politician they had reached a decision.

Subhash had to be silenced to prevent him from usurping them.

A plan was hatched and a strong poison was cleverly injected using a very thin strong needle through the cap of the sealed imported whiskey bottle.

The potency of the poison was so strong that death would be sudden.

The aftermath and the police investigation along with forensics would be stage-managed by the corrupt politician who had a share in the mill prime land deal.

They knew Subhash had a habit of sitting alone and enjoying his vinyl and whisky.

A leader would be silenced forever and the worker's strength could then be broken.

In Subhash’s ‘kholi’ the opened bottle of whiskey that had just been gifted to him this morning by his owner Suraj Kanojia was lying on the side wooden table.

Opening the seal he poured out a measure in his glass which had cracked ice.

Glass in hand as he took sips from the new imported English whiskey he was deep in thought carried away by the song from the gramophone and his emotions.

His brain was on overdrive he was in remorse.

He had to break the deal with owners.

He had to fight for the workers right and get them their compensation.

He had a lot of work to do.

He picked up the Dharam Karam 45 RPM record and loaded the gramophone by placing side one on the turntable.

It was Side one with the Mukesh and chorus song.

Clicking it on and once the disc started rotating he slowly lifted the spindle and placed the head with the stylus on the incised grooves of the periphery of the record.

The song played as he sat on the wooden armchair sipping his whiskey and the poison enacted its act.

The Lyrics floated from the speakers

‘’Ek din bik jayega, maati ke mol

Jag mein rah jayenge pyare tere bol

La la lal lal lal aa’’

(Everything would be sold on a Day just at the price of Dust (which is almost nothing). But your words would always remain in this world till it would exist)

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NOW PLEASE SCROLL UP AND READ THE BEGINNING PARAGRAPH (TILL — THE END) AS THAT WAS THE LAST PARAGRAPH !!

Hope all of you enjoyed the ride.